He who is slient, is strongest.

eldavojohn writes "MSNBC spoke with the senior producer of a new stereoscopic 3D game called Killzone 3 and highlighted problems they are trying to solve with being one of the first FPS 3D games for the PS3. The team ran into serious design problems, like where to put the crosshairs for the players (do they constantly hover in front of your vision?) and what to do with any of the heads-up display components. Aside from the obvious marketing thrown in at the end of the article (in a very familiar way), there is an interesting point raised concerning normalized conventions in all video games and how one ports that to the new stereoscopic 3D model — the same way directors continue to grapple with getting 3D right. Will 3D games be just as gimmicky as most 3D movies? If they are, at least Guerrilla Games is at least making it possible for the player to easily and quickly switch in and out of stereoscopic 3D while playing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

URL shortening shenanigans

Microsoft is investigating reports of a new bug in Internet Explorer.…

On-board internet access service goes live

East Midlands Trains has rolled out wireless internet access to its rolling stock.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Click here for hot ass action

It's only September, but we feel pretty confident that the El Reg 2010 Product Name of the Year will be awarded to the spectacularly-titled BumChum - a silent bass drum monitoring system which promises lively "bottom-end thump".…

An anonymous reader writes "Given the history of ACTA leaks, to no one's surprise, the latest version of the draft agreement (PDF) was leaked last night on KEI's website. The new version — which reflects changes made during an intense week of negotiations last month in Washington — shows a draft agreement that is much closer to becoming reality. Perhaps the most important story of the latest draft is how the countries are close to agreement on the Internet enforcement chapter. In the face of opposition, the US has dropped its demands on secondary liability for ISPs but is still holding out hope of establishing a super-DMCA with digital lock rules that go beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and were even rejected by US courts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

But US gets first handset

Vodafone has announced its 4G roll-out for Germany, though it seems it'll be Americans making the first 4G phone call.…

And you can too...

What a brilliant idea for a competition! Nokia has hired Pamela Anderson and Gossip Girl actor Ed Westwick to appear in The Commuter a short film short shot entirely on the not-quite-launched Nokia N8 - and you can appear in it too.…

More fun than a Stattenheim Remote Control?

Good news for budding Doctors: there will be a sonic screwdriver-style remote out in time for upcoming Wii title Doctor Who: Return to Earth.…

Barence writes "This week's IFA show has seen a flurry of Android-based alternatives to the iPad emerge from leading manufacturers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab made a strong first impression on PC Pro's reviewer. The 7-inch tablet's TFT screen 'beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles,' the device is capable of Full HD playback and the TouchWiz UI is 'clearly intended to draw customers away from the iFamily.' Elsewhere, ViewSonic has launched a pair of 7-inch and 10-inch tablets, the larger of which dual boots into either Android or Windows 7. 'Our first moments with Windows 7 were surprisingly painless, too: we expected the Atom processor and 1GB of memory to be horrendously sluggish, but it wasn't the case,' PC Pro reports. Finally, Toshiba's 10.1in Folio 100 marries Android 2.2 with Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform to deliver 'mighty graphics crunching power.' The build quality left a little to desire, though. 'The 14mm thick chassis feels lightweight, and even relatively gentle twisting motions left the Folio's plastic body creaking under the stress.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bad weather hits supplies hard

There's some grim news today for those kids who are still allowed to play conkers, albeit in full body armour with helmet and visor: the crap summer weather has caused a "real shortage of serviceable conkers".…

No jets involved, nor is it a pack. 'Blower-throne'?

A New Zealand company founded by a garage inventor says it is in talks to sell its so-called "Jetpack" - actually a personal ducted-fan aircraft too heavy to be lifted by its user - to the US military.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Part one of Doomsday Weekend: who can you trust?

Sysadmin blog As sysadmins, we have to test before we deploy. We need to test before even upgrading a driver. We should test absolutely everything before a major deployment. It seems obvious. It is obvious.…

Kilrah_il writes "The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Malware monitoring tech draws official ire

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, has rebuked TalkTalk for following its 4.2 million customers around the web without telling them.…

If Nevada gubernatorial candidate Eugene "Gino" DiSimone gets his way, $25 will buy you the right to drive up to 90mph for a day. DiSimone estimates his "free limit plan" will raise $1 billion a year for Nevada. From the article: "First, vehicles would have to pass a safety inspection. Then vehicle information would be loaded into a database, and motorists would purchase a transponder. After setting up an account, anyone in a hurry could dial in, and for $25 charged to a credit card, be free to speed for 24 hours."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's such a bungle, sometimes, it makes you wonder...

Symantec has belatedly secured its laughable HackIsWack competition website.…

pickens writes "The LA Times reports that 84-year-old Cuban ex-President Fidel Castro consumes 200 to 300 news items a day on the World Wide Web. In a recent interview he called Web communication 'the most powerful weapon that has existed' and extolled its power to break a stranglehold on the media by 'the empire' and 'ambitious private groups that have abused it' adding that the Internet 'has put an end to secrets.... We are seeing a high level of investigative journalism, as the New York Times calls it, that is within reach of the whole world.' Well, not the whole world. Cuba has the lowest level of Internet penetration in the Western Hemisphere (lower than Haiti), plus severe government restrictions and censorship affecting those who do have access. In addition Cuban law bans using the Internet to spread information that is against what the government considers to be the social interest, norms of good behavior, the integrity of the people or national security."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Action over inaction against Youth Justice Board

Children's Rights Group ARCH has threatened to take the Information Commissioner to a judicial review after the data regulator declined to take enforcement action the Youth Justice Board for unlawfully collecting and distributing data.…

angry tapir writes "A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload system and used it to post thousands of unwanted Wall messages last week. Facebook confirmed the bug Friday, after notifying affected users of the issue. Most of the messages promised 'Free iPhones,' a common spam message on Facebook these days. Facebook says that the spammer hit thousands of profiles before the company removed the spammy photos and notified affected users. No accounts were compromised as a result of the bug."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

My crappy component inferno: our first reader audio blog

World of Reg If you're mad as hell and you're not going to take this any more, if you're blissfully happy and can't wait to tell the world, or if you're just tired of listening to product marketing managers who don't know what it's like to get your hands dirty, now's your chance. Don't rant in the pub: share it with millions of Reg readers instead.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff